


deer die with their eyes wide open (eyes wide open)

by CallicoKitten



Series: but i've been thinking of you fondly for sure [6]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, M/M, Smut, mick's ongoing 'oh no i have feelings for ray' crisis, these guys are such a mess i swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-04-07 14:54:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14083407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CallicoKitten/pseuds/CallicoKitten
Summary: Around his eighth beer of the evening, Mick figures he probably owes Haircut something.-after axl's funeral, something shifts. pity it doesn't last long.





	deer die with their eyes wide open (eyes wide open)

Around his eighth beer of the evening, Mick figures he probably owes Haircut something.

And yeah, he didn’t _ask_ Haircut to throw Axl a funeral, wouldn’t have thought to because Axl might’ve been Axl but he was still a rat and rats don’t need funerals. But Haircut did that for him, made up a little coffin, little bouquets. Watched Mick all soft and kind and –

Look. Mick’s never asked Haircut for anything. For any of it. Nothing. Not once. But even after all the shit Mick’s said to him, the shit Mick’s done or not done, he still did that. Put on a show. Let Mick cry. Let Mick work through his emotions or whatever shit Haircut’s into knowing later, Mick’ll call him an idiot or jump him in the lab and be more rough than Haircut likes, bite him, bruise him. And if Mick gets another rat, calls him Lemmy or some shit, and Lemmy ends up dead, he’ll do it all over again.

He’s on beer nine when he figures he should probably _do_ something about it.

While he’s mulling it over, Sara wanders in, barefoot, bed-headed, half-smile lingering on her lips. Her eyes are soft, her cheeks are flushed. She looks good like this, Mick thinks. Happy. Relaxed. Not all tense and angry and hot. She glances up at him, quirks a smile, “Burning the midnight ale, Rory?”

Mick tips his bottle at her. “Always, boss.”

Sara pads over to the fridge, pulls it open and retrieves a bottle of wine, the box of fancy cakes Pretty snagged from France on their last stop off. She smirks at Mick when she straightens up. “Not a word to Nate. Say anything and I’ll tell him it was you.”

“Tell him,” Mick says. “What’s Pretty gonna do? Whine me to death?”

Sara quirks an eyebrow. “Fair point.” As she leaves she bumps his shoulder with hers, says, “Oh, and I’ve told Gideon to stop you drinking if your blood alcohol goes above 0.20.”

“I’d like to see her try,” Mick calls back but Sara’s already gone, snuck back to her bunk and her hot angry girlfriend and Gideon turns the lights off in the kitchen to broadcast how unimpressed she is with Mick’s challenge.

“It can be arranged, Mr Rory,” She says.

Mick sighs, sets down his beer and makes his way to Haircut’s room.

-

It’s late, late enough that Haircut’ll probably be asleep by now or on his way but he’ll open the door for Mick. He always does.

Mick knocks twice before he hears Haircut say something groggily, hears the rustle of covers and then clumsy footsteps. “Mick?” Haircut says, voice all sleep rough. “What’s going on?”

Mick sighs before he kisses him. Doesn’t let Haircut say anything further. Slides a hand up into his hair and slips his tongue in when Haircut gasps. He walks them into the room, the door slides shut behind them.

“Mick – ” Haircut pants into his mouth, hands fluttering all over Mick’s chest like he wants to pull him close and push him away all at once. “Mick – Mick, not that this isn’t nice but – ”

“Not the time for talking, Haircut,” Mick says, backing him towards the bed. Haircut falls backwards when the back of his knees meet the bed, ends up staring up at Mick with wide eyes and his mouth half hanging open.  “Unless you want me to stop?” Mick asks.

Haircut shakes his head so Mick bends to kiss him again, kisses him slow, kisses him deep. Strokes his jaw, his cheek, his hair. They’ve never really done this before. Mick’s not one for the chocolate and rose petals kind of stuff and Haircut might not have ever complained about it before but it doesn’t mean he didn’t want it. _Doesn’t_ want it. This soft shit. Mick rolling his hips slow and languid, sliding hands up under his t-shirt.

“Mick,” he whines. “ _Mick._ ”

Mick presses kisses down his throat, keeps the scrape of teeth light, teasing. “I got ya, Ray,” he says, against the hollow of his throat. “I got you.”

Ray tips his head back, lets out this little gasping sigh that makes Mick close his eyes briefly, makes him think about how fucked he is. How fucking lost he’s got himself over this moron.

He slides Haircut’s loose pyjama pants off of his hips, kisses back up towards his mouth.

He’s never gonna be what Haircut needs, what he deserves but he can give him this at least.

Afterwards, Haircut’s sprawled out across his chest, dozing. It’s kind of nice until he jerks back like he’s been burnt, blinks at Mick with flushed cheeks and says, “Sorry, Mick, you probably want to get back to your own room – Sorry, I should have – ”

Mick sighs at him but really, this is own fault. This is Mick being shitty. “You want me to go?”

Haircut stumbles to a halt, blinks at him. “Uh. No? But you usually – ”

Mick interrupts, “Get back down here, then.”

He doesn’t need telling twice. Lies back down, tucks himself against Mick’s side. He doesn’t relax though, not right away. Instead, he asks, quietly, “Are you sure?”

Mick curls an arm around his shoulder, pulls him closer. “Yeah. For now, anyway.”

-

Waking up in Haircut’s bed turns out not to be the worst thing in the world. Means he gets to sling an arm around him and pull him close, rock his hips until Haircut mumbles awake and arches back into him. Means he gets to fuck him the rest of the way awake, gets to spread him out on his sheets and swallow all the soft little noises he makes.

It’s a good way to start his day. Better than rolling out of his bed and hoping he doesn’t accidentally land in the beartrap.

Not that he’s gonna make a habit of it, or anything.

“This was nice,” Ray says afterwards. He’s looking at Mick all soft again. It feels kind of like taking a sledgehammer to the chest.

Mick snorts and stands up. “Don’t ruin it, Haircut. I’m going to shower before Blondie and her girlfriend clog it up with hair again.”

Before he leaves he glances around, half expects Ghost-Len to be smirking at him but Ghost-Len hasn’t been around since they picked up Fake Len. Leo. Whatever.

-

“You dropped the ball, Mick,” Sara says, when she’s been de-death totemed and Gideon’s back online and presumably fixing Haircut up. Mick’s in the kitchen. Couldn’t hack it in the medbay with Haircut looking all limp and bruised like that, knowing he had a hand in putting him there.

It still stings when Sara says it though, tosses it at him casually as she strides into the kitchen.

“Rich coming from you,” he says around the rim of his bottle.

Sara flinches and there’s a stab of guilt at that somewhere inside him. It’s drowned out by the alcohol and the way Haircut didn’t make a godamned sound as they carried him through to the medbay, the way his hair felt slipping through Mick’s fingers, damp with blood in places.

Mick passes a hand over his eyes.

“I was _possessed_ ,” Sara says and the word is rough in her mouth, jagged because she’s still trying it out for herself. “You were drunk. You were supposed to be with him.”

“We were on the ship,” Mick says flatly. “I didn’t think anyone would jump him. I didn’t think there was anyone on the ship who’d do that.” He sets his bottle down. “Besides, it wouldn’t have made a difference if I’d been there.”

Sara’s hands are resting on the counter. As Mick speaks, she drops her grip down to the handle on one of the drawers and snaps it off, tosses it across the floor. “You could have _stopped_ me,” she snaps, turns towards him but something softens in her. She shakes her head, voice unsteady. “You could have slowed me down. I could have _killed_ him, Rory.”

“But you didn’t,” Mick says. “And if I’d been there, you could have killed me too.”

Sara sighs, runs a hand through her hair.

Mick stands. “’m gonna go check in on Haircut.”

-

He’s there when Ray first blinks awake, turns his head this way and that blinking. “Mick? What happened? Where am I?” He asks, voice muffled by the mask. One hand comes up to grasp at it. Mick pries it away before he can tug the mask off.

“You’re in the medbay,” he says.

“You have a concussion, Doctor Palmer,” Gideon chimes in. “Along with several broken bones.”

Ray blinks. “How did – ” Then his eyes go wide.

Pre-emptively, Mick sets a hand on his chest to hold him still.

“We gotta – ” Ray says. “Sara, it was Sara, she – I think it was the totem – I’m sorry, I couldn’t – ”

“It’s fine, Haircut,” Mick says. “It’s sorted.”

“What?”

“Blondie. She’s fine. Everyone’s fine.”

Ray blinks again, slowly. “So, Sara’s okay? She didn’t hurt anyone else?”

Mick snorts, patting him on the chest. “She’s fine. Focus on you for a minute, would ya?”

“Okay,” Ray says. “Okay. But she didn’t hurt anyone else, Mick?”

Mick sighs.

-

It’s a few more hours before Ray leaves the medbay. Pretty had taken over by then, wondered in and told Mick he could go if he wanted. Mick hadn’t argued, hadn’t really seen the point.

The bruises are still fading a few days later, Ray’s still a little jumpy around Sara too, keeps apologising about it. Makes Mick’s skin crawl. He jumps Ray in the lab while they’re moored in the temporal zone, presses him against the edge of work table and kisses him hungrily to force away the memories. He slides his hands down to grip Ray’s hips, slips his hands past the waistband of his jeans.

“Mick,” Ray pants against his mouth. “ _Mick_ , wait – wait.”

Mick pulls back, impatient. “What is it, Haircut?”

Ray’s hands are at his shoulders, palms flat. “I - ” he says, his eyes wide. He swallows. “Mick, I – I don’t – I can’t do this.”

Mick narrows his eyes. “Do what?”

Ray’s shoulders slump forward, his eyes soft like they’d been at Axl’s funeral. “ _This_ ,” he says, quietly. “I don’t – ” He looks down. “Mick, I don’t want to just be something you do when you’re bored. I want – ” He swallows again, “I deserve more than that.”

Mick steps back. He’s always known this would happen eventually. Haircut’d wake up someday, find himself a pretty girl or boy that looks at him the way he deserves and that ain’t Mick. That’s never gonna be Mick.

“You’re right,” Mick says. “You do.”

Ray looks surprised at that, blinks prettily, mouth going slack. “Oh,” he says.

But he doesn’t call out when Mick walks away and Mick doesn’t look back.

-

Ghost-Len, he thinks, would laugh. Laugh his fucking ass off. Then he’d sit there and sneer, say, _if you’re so broken up about it, Mick, why didn’t you fight for it, hm? Why didn’t you fight for him?_

Amaya comes to find him in the kitchen. He knew it’d be her. Sara’s too wrapped up in her own stuff, Zari would probably rather face Mollus on her own than deal with Mick and his shit and Pretty’s still scared of him.

 _You know this is the right thing, Mick,_ Ghost-Len would be saying. Except he’s not.

Amaya sighs, approaches him slowly. “Oh, _Mick_ ,” she says.

Mick closes his eyes. Takes a breath. He’s graduated from beer to whiskey today, figures he’s earnt it, curls his fingers tight around the neck of his bottle. The fire totem is warm against his chest, he feels it pulse through his fingers. Could snap the bottle if he wanted to. Scare her off.  

“Ray told me what happened,” Amaya says. “He asked me to check on you.”

Mick snorts. “’Course he did.”

Amaya crosses the room, leans against the table with her arms folded. She tilts her head at him. “I know how much you care about him, Mick. And I know how much he cares about you. You don’t have to let it end like this, you know?”

Mick sighs. “No. He’s right. He deserves better,” he says, keeping his gaze on the bottle in front of him.

“But you _are_ better,” Amaya says. “You’re a better man now, Mick. The fire totem is proof of that. You can be that better man for Ray if you want.”

Mick closes his eyes again. He’s thinking of Len. Of his father. Of everything before he ended up on this stupid ship with this band of morons. With one moron in particular, maybe. He’s thinking of all the shit he’s done in the past. The people he’s screwed over. Hurt. Ripped to fucking pieces. He might have been rewired along the way, been recalibrated but he’s not one of them, not really. Never will be. And he’ll definitely never deserve the way Raymond fucking Palmer looks at him.

 _Looked_ at him.

“You wouldn’t understand,” he growls.

Amaya just tuts, sets a hand on his shoulder and squeezes comfortingly.


End file.
